Fruits and their multiple properties

The amount of fruit in the diet is an important factor, it must not be missing. Fruit is an essential source of water-soluble vitamins and for some types of orange and red fruit also of carotenoid precursors of vitamin A. Fruit is also an essential source of minerals such as potassium, magnesium and is important for rehydrating the body having at least 80% water. Fruit is  essential to increase the intake of soluble and mucilaginous fiber and a little less of insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber makes the stools softer and facilitates intestinal flow and due to their constitution they incorporate bile salts, eliminating them, thus favoring the reduction of blood cholesterol. Fruit is often demonized, but only for one reason, its content in glucose, fructose and other sugars such as mannose, but it is an unjustified fear because unless you eat disproportionate quantities of them, the carbohydrate intake is minimal. There are types of fruit such as apple or orange or grapefruit which have lower sugars and many essential elements such as water-soluble vitamins that the body cannot produce.

How much fruit to consume depends on whether you are a normal person, or if you play intensely sports or if you need to gain weight or lose weight. But fruit must not be missing and must be present for a minimum of one portion (150 g): more suitable for those who need to lose weight, have a clear tendency to accumulate fat, have insulin resistance; two portions divided perhaps into the two daily snacks if the weight must be maintained, or hypercholesterolemia must be reduced; three portions if instead you are in great health, you are a sportsman and therefore need to rehydrate your physical activity and reintroduce the lost salts, you are particularly stressed, you have intestinal problems of constipation, or stomach acidity problems, you have inflammation and you need for example to gain weight.

So it’s very relative, but if you want to live longer, fruits shouldn’t be missing. You may need to reduce it sometimes if you suffer from diarrhea, or diverticulosis or excessive intestinal inflammation and fermentation, but never completely and permanently, but only for short periods.

The fibers and sugars of the fruit are in fact fermented by intestinal bacteria and produce SCFA (short chain fatty acid) such as butyric acid above all, so essential for health and the production of mucin in the intestine, thus performing a prebiotic action . We can open a parenthesis on the quality of the fruit and say that if you prefer organic fruit you help the body not to introduce large quantities of pesticides or other chemical substances and you certainly promote health. If the fruit is not organic then peelable fruit would be better, while if it were organic you can afford to consume it with the peel so rich in antioxidants and polyphenols.

Citrus fruits are more suitable in the morning to reduce the acidity of the body, banana, plum better after training; apple, pear, strawberries, as snacks during the day. Instead, tropical fruit such as papaya and mango would be better consumed occasionally and only in the original countries, avoiding absurd and polluting journeys of thousands of kilometres. Red and purple fruit, on the other hand, is exceptional for the high content of polyphenols such as anthocyanins, essential for the blood vessels health and the heart and therefore must be part of our diet at least 1-2 times a week. Yellow and orange fruit are also precursors of carotenoids and therefore essential for healthy skin and eyesight. The fruit should then be in season to avoid non-organic and to better appreciate the vitamin content which was found to be higher precisely in seasonal fruits than in those created in greenhouses or grown in other countries and therefore forced to be harvested in advance without making them ripen on the plant of origin.

So as you can see fruit has too many properties to be eliminated completely and therefore even the ketogenic diets that eliminate them have well-founded health repercussions if followed in the long term, therefore their introduction if you follow ketogenic programs must be carried out as soon as possible avoiding their absence for a long term that favor the growth of tumor formations of which fruit is strongly preventive.